The competition within the culinary industry is fierce!

It’s not always easy to come up with creative marketing ideas for restaurants. As a restaurant owner, you have a lot on your plate and marketing is just a small slice of your business. But it’s an important one that’s key to getting more customers in the door. If you’re looking for some effective and creative marketing strategies for your restaurant, here are 6 marketing ideas for restaurants that want to stay ahead of the curve.

The Airbnb vs. hotel debate is often a difficult choice for vacationers. Hotel owners should focus on these four areas to keep customers coming back.

Airbnb vs. hotel? It’s a hot topic among travelers and continues to change the approach of the hospitality industry. Airbnb allows hosts to rent out properties and rooms to guests. While this is an appealing option for some, it’s not without drawbacks. Hotels offer greater reliability, benefits, and amenities that vacation rentals simply can’t match. So, if you want to beat the Airbnb competition, here’s what you need to know to keep your vacancies low.

Running a restaurant is tough and burnout amongst staff is common.

Restaurant jobs aren’t for the faint of heart. Kitchens bring on the heat and pressure and not only for the food. Staff burnout and mental health issues are rampant in the hospitality world. Restaurant owners and managers must form a tight bond with their crew to foster a healthy (and sane) work environment. If you want to protect yourself and your staff, you need to help everyone maintain a work life balance in the restaurant industry.

Providing patrons with a stellar dining experience is what truly sets great restaurants apart. In the competitive food and hospitality industry, any opportunity to offer a distinctive and memorable meal will help you stand out and succeed. From fine dining to themed restaurants with a special niche, it’s ultimately the customer’s experience and satisfaction that matter most.

Lakefront Brewery is a thriving and beloved brewery and restaurant at the heart of Milwaukee’s riverfront.

Founded in 1987 by two brothers, Russ and Jim Klisch, this iconic beer establishment has been providing the Milwaukee community with good beer, good food, and even better memories for over 30 years. Interestingly, their ever-popular restaurant, located in the brewery’s beer hall, wasn’t always part of the plan.

We sat down with Russ Klisch, president and co-founder of Lakefront Brewery, and Mike Walker, Lakefront Brewery Front of House Manager to learn more about what it’s like to run a brewery restaurant business, how to create great brews, and the details of Lakefront Brewery’s journey to becoming a treasured Milwaukee staple.

The number of food trucks is on the rise and that’s a good sign for the restaurant industry as a whole.

The popularity of food trucks is soaring and shows no signs of slowing down. Budding chefs and restaurateurs once saw food trucks as a novel way to enter into the culinary industry without a brick and mortar investment. Now, even established eateries are embracing food trucks for a variety of reasons. Before you starting truck shopping or coming up with punny names for your menu, consider the benefits and the challenges of operating a food truck connected to your restaurant. Here’s what every restaurateur needs to know about the trend.

The decision to sell your restaurant isn’t likely to happen on a whim. It takes careful planning, as well as time to get your affairs in order.

Every restaurant owner thinks about selling at one time or another. But even if your restaurant is a red hot success and buyers are lined up at the door, figuring out how to sell a restaurant isn’t as simple as selling a home or a car. It often takes several months to make a sale, and it can pay to start preparing a full year in advance. Understanding how to sell a restaurant is about more than just having your paperwork in order and upgrading a few appliances. It takes marketing savvy, knowledge of your business and sometimes even professional help to get your restaurant in shape to sell and fetch a price that will make you happy.

We have a few tips for how established hotels can stay ahead of new hotel competition.

There will always be new competition for your clientele. Whether your hotel exists in a tourist town, near an airport or other public transportation, or in a drive-through city that resides along the route of a popular road trip, your hotel can’t rest on its laurels for long. Newcomers always challenge decade-long-standing hotels—all thanks to novelty. Hotels with a few years under their belts can do a few things to push back against new hotel competition and fight to stay on top of the market.

This new seasonal tradition is giving small businesses the attention they deserve when holiday madness strikes.

Black Friday is a uniquely American tradition. Thanksgiving weekend is well known as the kickoff to the crazy rush of sales that signals the beginning of the holiday shopping season. In the rush of amazing sales and unusual opening times, small businesses unable to afford big advertising pushes or big price drops can often get left out in the late November cold. A newer tradition, Small Business Saturday, recently began to create awareness of local businesses and small shops that need holiday dollars just as much, if not more, than the big box stores.

The more you know about the different types of senior health care, the better focus you will have on what you can provide.

With more people living longer, the options for senior health care expand every day. Seniors entering the marketplace look to strike a balance between maintaining the lifestyle that they want with the care and medical attention they need. Proactive care centers are exploring their options to stay on the cutting edge of senior service. Care centers need to evolve to stay successful. You can reach out to more seniors who might benefit from your help by delivering a wide variety of services for your clients.